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Social Influence and Political Communication Commons™
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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Social Influence and Political Communication
The Fertilization President: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The United States’ Rebirth Of Pronatalism, Kara Vetch
The Fertilization President: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The United States’ Rebirth Of Pronatalism, Kara Vetch
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The United States experienced one of the lowest birth rates in decades in 2024 and has been blamed by policymakers for poor economic and societal outcomes. To combat this, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to encourage healthcare insurances to lower the cost of fertility treatments. Policies encouraging more births align with pronatalist ideologies, the belief that higher national birth rates are better for society. Furthermore, Vice President JD Vance and social media influencers, Malcolm and Simone Collins, have built a strong resurgence of pronatalist ideologies through public addresses and interviews long before Trump’s executive order. For an in-depth …
Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver
Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity seeks to explain to undergraduate students how to craft a proper attack and defense in argumentation and debate, persuasion, or political communication courses. The activity teaches students 1) the parts of a basic argument structure and 2) how to construct a rebuttal using a basic argument structure. Students will argue against their true political typology by selecting an opposing typology from the Pew Research Typology Quiz. Broadly, this exercise is designed to encourage students to engage in dialogues with people who disagree with their political positionality. Specifically, the activity accomplishes this by teaching students the value of basic …
Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia
Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Drawing objects and concepts, such as cats, trees, love, democracy, and family, is probably the last activity students expect to do in a communication course. Although this sounds like an introductory art activity, creating visual representations provides a nuanced understanding of the encoding and decoding processes. Encoding and decoding are the most hidden and often the most unfamiliar and complex fundamental components of communication for students to comprehend. By engaging in this activity, students translate their decoding process into drawings, which serve as personal artifacts representative of their encoding and decoding. Students come to better conceptualize this cognitive process with …
“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler
“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity demonstrates communication competence and allows students to observe, assess, and ultimately utilize the model of communication competence to engage with other people successfully. To understand how to engage in communication competence, students must recognize that appropriateness and effectiveness are crucial aspects of their communication. Through the communication competence model, students examine how to achieve effectiveness in their communication by setting goals for specific contexts; they also consider to what extent their goals are achievable given the particular situation. Using a 2014 MTV Video Music Award example, students can analyze why Miley Cyrus allowed a homeless man to accept …
Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick
Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Despite numerous quantitative assessments of teaching interventions that have helped mitigate public speaking anxiety (PSA), this common barrier to public speaking persists. In addition, quantitative measures may not be appropriate for all instructional goals, especially with students from across a variety of cultures. To enrich educators’ capacity to help diverse bodies of students overcome the challenges presented by PSA, this qualitative study asked students to “Please describe yourself as a public speaker” at the beginning and the end of a freshman-level, general education public speaking class. Thematic analysis identified a two-dimensional pattern within student responses (N = 51) (a …
Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota
Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
No abstract provided.
Fighting For What Is Right: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Fan Campaign To Save Anne With An E From Cancellation, Marie E. Anderson
Fighting For What Is Right: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Fan Campaign To Save Anne With An E From Cancellation, Marie E. Anderson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Anne with an E fan campaign highlighted storylines of social issues that fans felt were important for society. Of particular interest to the fan community was a storyline from the series in which Anne and her friends organized a protest following incidents of sexual assault and censorship aimed at silencing girls from speaking out on gendered issues. This storyline was heavily referenced in the billboards that the fan-based campaign displayed in Toronto and New York City (Anne Nation, 2020). In this analysis, I used fantasy theme analysis (Bormann, 1972) and metaphorical criticism (Osborn, 2018) to conduct a visual and …
Theoretical Motivations For Posting In #Metoo, Shannon Pappas
Theoretical Motivations For Posting In #Metoo, Shannon Pappas
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In 2017, actress Alyssa Milano shared a tweet encouraging survivors of gendered violence to write “me too.” A media storm ensued as survivors answered her call in the millions. Anyone can look back at what survivors posted during the height of #MeToo, but we still don’t know why they felt the need to post in the first place. To answer this question, the social identity model of deindividuation effects and spiral of silence were utilized. The social identification, perceived anonymity affordances, and willingness to self-censor scales were used for this research, along with a perceived deindividuation scale that was created …
Reconnecting With The Truth: Conspiracies, Perspective Taking, And Misinformation, Scott Sellnow-Richmond, Mili Pinski
Reconnecting With The Truth: Conspiracies, Perspective Taking, And Misinformation, Scott Sellnow-Richmond, Mili Pinski
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
“I’ve done my research.” Misinformation has become a prevalent topic in communication courses, particularly those focused on argumentation, public speaking, or even interpersonal and family communication. Students thus benefit from adapting public speaking-focused assignments to illuminate how to understand - and thus combat- disinformation in their own lives. This assignment works toward this goal in two stages, allowing students to argue not just against misinformation and conspiracies, but also to argue for them as an act of empathy and understanding. The applied nature of this exercise also empowers instructors with a way to concretely address this issue in the classroom. …
“People Don’T Always Show Up The Way You Want Them To”: Utilizing The Hunger Games To Differentiate Between Persuasion, Coercion, Propaganda, And Manipulation, Nancy Bressler
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
The ability to define and conceptualize persuasion and its nuances without engaging in coercion, propaganda, and/or manipulation can be difficult for students at first. This activity centralizes the fine points among these persuasive concepts. Students also recognize the role of their audience in the persuasive messages that they create. Rather than only having a conversation about the common characteristics of these terms and how they differ, students can observe them within the fictional movie The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (Lawrence, 2014). After discussing these ideas with their classmates, students then apply what they have learned by creating persuasive messages …
Make The Inaugural Great Again: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Donald J. Trump’S Inaugural Address, Danielle F. Dickerson
Make The Inaugural Great Again: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Donald J. Trump’S Inaugural Address, Danielle F. Dickerson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In this thesis, I utilized three distinct theories (ideographs, dramatism, and the bully pulpit) to rhetorically analyze and assess President Trump’s 2017 inaugural address. Ultimately, I analyzed whether Trump deviated from Campbell and Jamieson’s (1985) presidential inaugural expectations. While the presidential inaugural address was the only text analyzed, implications were drawn from Trump’s rhetoric leading up to and within the inaugural. This thesis also analyzed Trump’s rhetoric through social media, specifically Twitter, and looked at the context surrounding the inaugural. I suggest, through my research, that Trump does deviate from the traditional framework of the inaugural address, and ultimately modernized …
Enemies Of The State: The Symbolic Annihilation Of White-Zimbabwean Identity In The Twenty-First Century, Rick Malleus
Enemies Of The State: The Symbolic Annihilation Of White-Zimbabwean Identity In The Twenty-First Century, Rick Malleus
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This article explores the Zimbabwean government-controlled newspapers’ symbolic annihilation of white-Zimbabwean identity in the twenty-first century. Zimbabwe has been through political, social, and economic upheaval in the last 15 years, and it is in this context that the media’s construction of white identity is examined. Using a content analysis of online articles from The Herald and The Chronicle, six themes of constructed white identity were identified. The government media’s motivation for this symbolic annihilation of white-Zimbabwean identity is discussed, and the article concludes with a consideration about why this construction of white-Zimbabwean identity matters.
“Symbols Are Important”: Nation-States And The Images On Our Money, John R. Katsion
“Symbols Are Important”: Nation-States And The Images On Our Money, John R. Katsion
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Visual rhetoric has been an area of growing interest for those within the communication field, and this study aims to add to that body of work. One area within the study of visual rhetoric is the everyday, mundane images produced by nation-states, and more narrowly, the images on a nation’s currency. Traditionally, scholars who study images on currency have seen them through the lens of state-as-pedagogue—in other words, that the state is using that “sacred space” to teach their citizenry. Political theorist and scholar Jacques E.C. Hymans (2204, 2010) challenges this notion, and instead posits that nation-states try to connect …
A Guilty Conscience: Barack Obama And America’S Guilt In “A More Perfect Union”, Scott Anderson
A Guilty Conscience: Barack Obama And America’S Guilt In “A More Perfect Union”, Scott Anderson
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
On March 18, 2008, Barack Obama addressed the status of racial equality in America in a speech titled “A More Perfect Union.” The speech came on the heels of a media firestorm that erupted around Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s religious advisor and friend, whom media accused of harboring allegedly racist and anti-American sentiment. The association with Wright undermined Obama’s status as the post-racial candidate and threatened to derail his presidential bid. Using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic process (the guilt-purification-redemption cycle), this article argues that Obama’s use of guilt may have contributed to his success. In the speech Obama elucidated three types …
Exploring The Canons Of Rhetoric Through Phil Davison’S Campaign Stump Speech, Joshua N. Westwick, Kelli J. Chromey
Exploring The Canons Of Rhetoric Through Phil Davison’S Campaign Stump Speech, Joshua N. Westwick, Kelli J. Chromey
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
A common learning objective of many communication courses centers on speech criticism and evaluation, and the classic canons of rhetoric (invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery of the speaker) have been used to help communication students achieve these learning outcomes. This teaching activity provides a creative and meaningful way to explore the canons of rhetoric—through assigning students to perform critical evaluation of a popularized YouTube video, the campaign stump speech of Stark County, Ohio, treasurer candidate Phil Davison. Students have responded favorably to the activity and demonstrated an increased awareness and understanding of the rhetorical canons and their use in …
"I Don't Always Look At Memes, But When I Do, It's For A Class": Using Memes To Demonstrate Language Rules, Jocelyn M. Degroot, Hannah Coy
"I Don't Always Look At Memes, But When I Do, It's For A Class": Using Memes To Demonstrate Language Rules, Jocelyn M. Degroot, Hannah Coy
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity uses Internet memes to demonstrate the pervasiveness of language rules and culture’s effect on language in online culture. Numerous introductory communication courses include a discussion on verbal communication that focuses on language rules and the effects of culture on verbal communication. The most relevant language rules for memes are the regulative rules that guide action and how we use language (Cronen, Pearce, & Harris, 1979). In this exercise, students analyze and evaluate language rules present in popular online memes. The students identify the language rule utilized in each of a pre-chosen set of Internet memes and generate at …
Metaphors That Communicate Weight-Based Stigma In Political News: A Case Study Of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, J. Anderson, Y. Zhu, J. Zhuang, J.C. Nelson, M.J. Bresnahan, X. Yan
Metaphors That Communicate Weight-Based Stigma In Political News: A Case Study Of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, J. Anderson, Y. Zhu, J. Zhuang, J.C. Nelson, M.J. Bresnahan, X. Yan
Communication Studies Publications
News media use metaphors to describe politics (Landau & Keefer, 2014) and obesity (Barry,Brescoll, Brownell, & Schlesinger, 2009). Weight-based stigma is prevalent in U.S. news media (Heuer,McClure, & Puhl, 2011). Media coverage of politicians’ body size may contain metaphors that stigmatizeweight. Metaphors reflect and shape how people think about important issues like politics or obesity(Landau, Sullivan, & Greenberg, 2009; Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010; Landau & Keefer, 2014).
Objective – This study uses stigma communication theory (Smith, 2007) to examine stigmatizing metaphors used in media coverage of a United States politician, and candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, New …
Political Success And The Media, Connor J. Haaland
Political Success And The Media, Connor J. Haaland
The Journal of Undergraduate Research
How have different media affected the linguistic performativity of the most prominent American politicians throughout history? How have different types of media allowed certain linguistic features to flourish, and others to fail? I address these question’s through a diachronic analysis of three different periods of American history as well as an investigation into effective linguistic features that manifest over the radio, through television, and on social media. In addition, I confront the myth that there is a relationship between reading level of speech determined by the Flesch-Kincaid algorithm and success as an orator. I find relationships between linguistic features unique …
The Syrian Refugee Crisis: A Rhetorical Analysis Of President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, And President Donald J. Trump’S Political Discourse About Syrian Refugees, Erin Lionberger
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In this thesis, I introduce the reader to sixteen texts of political discourse about Syrian refugees from three rhetors; President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and President Donald J. Trump. As the Syrian refugee crisis continues to grow, political leaders and citizens around the world debate the appropriate way to provide aid to those fleeing Syria. I rhetorically analyze multiple texts from each of these politicians’ and their use of framing, ideographs and metaphors within their political discourse. In my research, I suggest that the framing language used by each rhetor about Syrian refugees has varying impacts on the audience. The …